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For Sale: Poveglia, The Haunted Italian Island With A Chilling History

I would not accept a free vacation at the luxury hotel the Italy hopes will be built on this spot. Via the Telegraph:

Dubbed one of the most haunted places in the world, Poveglia, which was sealed off after it was hit by the plague, is to be auctioned off to raise money for Italy.

The 17-acre island became a quarantine station for ships arriving at Venice in the 18th century. After a plague was discovered on two ships, the island was sealed off and used to host people with infectious diseases, leading to legends of terminally ill Venetians waiting to die before their ghosts returned to haunt the island.

A hospital for the elderly which opened in 1922 and operated until 1968 is rumoured to have hosted experiments on the mentally ill, including crude lobotomies, carried out by a director who was driven mad by ghosts before throwing himself from the hospital’s tower.

The Italian state is now hoping that offers will arrive to transform the hospital into a luxury hotel under a deal giving the buyer a 99-year lease to redevelop the property.

The island is currently closed to visitors, but an American TV presenter who visited the island and entered the abandoned hospital for the Travel Channel series Ghost Adventures claimed to have been briefly possessed by a ghost there.